


Tell Me How You Like it

by RebelleCrown



Series: Tell Me How You Like it [1]
Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Angst and Feels, But at least it's really hot, Dirty Talk, F/M, It gets really hot and then BAM it's also sad, Shameless Smut, Smut, Smut and Angst, hot hot hot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:07:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26611942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RebelleCrown/pseuds/RebelleCrown
Summary: He’d always had that question for her.What do you want? Tell me what you want. Tell me, sweetheart, when you think about me - think aboutthis -what do I do to you?At first she’d been almost shy about voicing the wicked, naughty things she’d imagined him indulging her with. She’d given him half-answers. Nothing specific. But not today.(Pure Nessian smut with flashbacks to other smutty times)
Relationships: Nesta Archeron/Cassian
Series: Tell Me How You Like it [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1935919
Comments: 20
Kudos: 86





	Tell Me How You Like it

**Author's Note:**

> I turned on my laptop to actually try and work on my novel but I guess not

It was _hot._

The Illyrian Steppes were so cold, Nesta thought, biting back a groan as Cassian’s teeth sank into her shoulder, and yet she always found herself thinking that. _Hot hot hot._

Maybe it was less to do with where they were in the world and more to do with the fact that his mouth was on her, his hands, indulging her in such a way she knew his body soon would be too. Maybe it was the tidal wave that always hit her and dragged her under when he touched her like that.

It had been a peaceful night, once such a rarity, and they were both sitting on the couch. Her feet were in his lap, and they were both reading in front of the fire. She looked up and smiled at him whenever he made a sound in response to something in his book, a reaction he didn’t notice. He did the same whenever the fire crackled and she withheld her flinch, breathing deep through the pain that tried to drag her away, a reaction she pretended not to pay attention to every damn time.

Then he’d stopped reading, placing the closed book on the coffee table, and simply sat back again, hands resting on her ankles and eyes cast towards the far wall.

“You aren’t going to bother with a bookmark?” she’d asked, eyebrows raised.

His teeth flashed in a smile. “Don’t need one. I know my page number. 252.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’ll never remember that. Especially not if it takes you another five hundred to pick up the damned book.”

Cassian huffed indignantly. “I read before you came along, you know.”

“Not near as much as you do now. And even then I doubt your repertoire went far beyond… attack manuals. Or whatever.”

Cassian laughed, a deep, true laugh that had her catching herself to keep from curling her toes in his lap. _“Attack manuals.”_ He shook his head. “You know, I had _some_ taste before your _Darkest Nights_ series came along.”

“Ah, but it can’t compare to the refinement you have now.”

“Now that’s true.” His fingers traced circles on her ankles. “You have opened me to so many things, Nesta Archeron.”

She wasn’t exactly sure what had happened after that, if she was being honest with herself. But her book was somewhere between the couch and the door, closed without a bookmark - fuck the page number - and she and Cassian were meeting somewhere in the middle of where they’d been sitting, hands clutching and teeth scraping and tongues slashing. Nesta struggled to wrap her legs around his waist as he tugged open the buttons of her shirt, calluses scraping over her breasts and rubbing against her peaked nipples. Had the flames escaped the fireplace, or was it just _really_ hot in here…?

She groaned as he ground his hardness into her, peeling away the loose shirt she’d had thrown on over her nightdress. “Still bothering with so many layers, sweetheart?”

She gulped down air, fingers scrabbling with the rough buckles on his _stupid_ leathers. “I think you’re the _least_ in position to ask that question.” 

He laughed, low and rough, sliding his hands up her thighs under the dress. “What position would you prefer me in, _sweetheart_?”

_Sweetheart_. It was that stupid nickname that had sparked their first encounter.

She’d been in the Steppes for a few weeks by then, and neither had warmed towards another. She’d been prepared to storm away and cloister herself alone in her room again when Cassian had grabbed her, pressed her against the wall.

“You’re not alright,” he’d said bluntly, looking her over. From the dead-eyed look to the bony ribs to the broken heart, as if he could see all the way through to it. “Tell me what I can do to fix you. Just tell me what’s _broken_.”

Something had snapped in her at those words, and when she reached for her walls, they hadn’t come up. So she only blinked at him, let him see everything, and said, “I’m not good with talking.”

If she didn’t know better, she would have sworn panic flashed in his eyes for a second. Then he’d just purred, “Then what _are_ you good at, sweetheart?”

Maybe looking for some kind of confession, some kind of opening up and some kind of healing. But she didn’t have that to give him. So she’d pulled his mouth to hers and kissed him before she could think about it.

Now she was trying to keep her breathing steady as his mouth brushed the silken skin of her inner thigh, climbing higher. What encounter was this now? She'd lost the number. The stray curls from his man bun disappeared beneath her hitched-up skirt, like a curtain veiling him from sight. She didn’t need to see him to feel as his lips drew ever closer to the ache building unbearably, just for him.

His hands slid under her, curving around to grip her ass. He lifted her hips up to meet his mouth, and she choked on a whimper as she at last felt his lips on the slickness between her legs. 

She cried out as his tongue slid through her, brazenly pressing hard against her most sensitive spot. _“That’s - I - ahh - ”_

Cassian hummed his approval, tongue sweeping through again. She knew he liked it when she showed him, told him how much he pleased her. Arrogant male ass, even if he was hot as all hell.

He’d driven her to near insanity that first time, when he’d taken her rough and hard against the wall. He’d kept his mouth on her ear almost the whole time, licking up the column of her neck to nibble on the earlobe, run his tongue up the delicate tip. And he’d whispered _dirty, sinful things_ until they’d shattered her. 

“You like it when I do that?” he’d growled, thrusting up into her at the angle that had him hitting that one damned spot inside her, that one spot that made her lose her composure and cry out loud. 

“ _Yes_ ,” she’d cried, near sobbing with the pleasure as he drove into her again, again. “ _Oh, yes, oh gods, yes._ ” 

“ _Nesta_ ,” he’d groaned, right into her ear, sending a shiver along her spine where release was already gathering. “ _You don’t know what that does to me._ Your voice, your damned voice.” She’d whimpered, tipping her head back against the wall as he’d thrust at a new angle, brushing his lips across the shell of her ear as he spoke. “I wondered for a long time what you’d sound like, moaning for me. But you sound _so much fucking better_.” One hand ran up her breast, circling the nipple in a horrendous tease as he kept up his steady pace, in, out, in, out. “ _Say my name. Let me hear you say it_.”

She might have snarled at him, snapped some retort, but she was already crying out her pleasure as he again drove deep, so hard, _so good_. So she cried out, _“Cassian.”_ Then, as release loomed over her head like a thunderhead, she screamed it, again and again. _“CASSIAN! Cass - oh,_ oh, _Cassian_ … ahh…” 

His body had crushed against hers as she roared his name, roared it like it was all that existed as she shattered entirely, yielding her entire existence to him and his godlike body in that moment. _“Nesta,_ ” he had groaned in her ear, those perfect movements growing shallow and erratic. _“NESTA - ”_

At the memory of it, right as his lips wrapped around her sensitive bud and sucked hard, she cried his name once again and let herself fall to pieces. His tongue stroked her through the throes of it, seemingly unbothered by the deathgrip her legs had around his head as his hands ran in lazy lines down the sides of her body. 

She gasped for air as he withdrew slowly, lifting the skirt over his head once more. He smirked at her, lying limp and helpless on the couch, reeling from a climax he’d given her… _arrogant male ass…_

He undid the buckles and irritating strap-things on his leathers, the ones Nesta’s delicate fingers weren’t callused enough to work. He let her catch her breath, catch herself, as he slowly revealed to her his chest, his abdomen, all the way down to the vee of muscles that tensed and disappeared…

He smirked further as he watched her gaze, and quit flexing his upper body long enough to reach for the hem of his pants. Slowly undoing them, removing them, revealing the long, hard length straining beneath. Nesta made no effort to keep the simmering lust from her eyes at the sight of it.

Cassian grinned, one hand idly stroking her bent calf as she looked her fill. The other hand ran up his own muscled thigh, circling closer to where she wanted it - where he wanted it - where _she wanted -_

He made a show of groaning, face twisting, as his hand wrapped around himself, gripping tight. _“Nesta,”_ he groaned, moving his hand. He tipped his head forward, a lock of that dark, tangled hair falling over his brow. _“Nesta.”_

Heat pounded through her, her mouth going dry. “Cassian - ”

“ _Nesta_ ,” he interrupted her, grunting his pleasure as his hand shifted again. He opened one eye long enough to give her a shit-eating grin laced with his pleasure. _“Ahh…”_

She struggled against herself, struggled to get her buzzing limbs to cooperate, struggled to untangle her sleeves from under her dress. “Cass - Cassian - _Please_ \- ”

“Tell me what you want,” Cassian growled. He grabbed her roughly under the chin with the hand that had been on her leg as she made her way into sitting, making her look at him. _Really_ look at him. “Tell me what you want me to _do_ to you, sweetheart. Tell me every dirty, filthy thing you think about when you look at me, and every scandalous thing you want me to - ”

He was cut off by her surging forward to meet him, grabbing his face and crushing her lips into his. Either she’d truly managed to surprise him, or she’d played right into his hand, because when her body crashed into his, he fell back against the corner of the couch, wings splaying.

He’d always had that question for her. _What do you want? Tell me what you want. Tell me, sweetheart, when you think about me - think about_ this - _what do I do to you?_

At first she’d been almost shy about voicing the wicked, naughty things she’d imagined him indulging her with. She’d given him half-answers - _I want you to fuck me. I want you to make me come. I want to feel you inside me._ Nothing specific. But not today.

Tracing her hands up his sinfully gorgeous abs, up over his pecs, to his arms, right the way to his wrists, she pinned him down, leaning over him. Her dress was still on, but it didn’t cover much - her breasts virtually hanging out the neckline, the sheer material damp with their sweat already. His eyes were wide, nearly black, as she brought her face close to his, close enough he could feel every filthy, dirty word.

“You want me to tell you the things I think about you?” she purred, undulating her body so her chest nearly brushed his - but not quite. Teasing as merciless as he always did. “You want me to tell you what I _do_ when I think about you?”

She felt his breathing quicken, felt his pulse jump where she gripped his wrists above his head. “Go on,” he said. Despite the obvious effort to keep his cool, the words were so guttural she hardly recognised them.

She smirked, running her lips over his cheeks, his jaw, his neck. Letting her teeth sink into the juncture of his shoulder. Then she brought her mouth up to his ear, just as he had all those weeks ago, and started to whisper.

“Some nights you were gone - even before we started doing this. You’d be gone, and I’d be alone, and something would make me think of you.” She tugged on his earlobe with her teeth. “Something that smelled like you… an old shirt you’d left lying around… one of the smutty scenes in my books.” She trailed kisses in a torturous circle just under his ear, sensitive enough she could feel the blood pounding beneath. “And I would want you so bad… I would get _so_ hot…” 

Despite the notorious chill of the icy Steppes, it had never taken much for that where he was concerned. Sometimes it would just be that word, _sweetheart,_ before he left the hut in the freezing mornings, and all of a sudden Nesta would be burning up, the ache between her thighs unbearable. So it was not much of a surprise that she had so, _so_ many dirty things to choose between to tell him now.

She felt him whimper beneath her before she even began her next sentence. “I always looked for you first. Just in case.” To seek his help or to pretend nothing had happened, she was never quite sure. “And then I slipped under the covers of my bed, and took off all my clothes - sometimes imagined them ripping, because even before, I _knew_ you could be rough with me. Knew that our first time wouldn’t be sweet or tender or anything akin to _lovemaking_. I imagined you would be a tempest above me, and you would tear me apart, and it would feel _so damn good_.” She ground her center against his hardness for emphasis, and he whimpered again. She loved that sound, she decided. Loved that she could make it come out of him.

“And I would run my hands over my body, and think of you, and imagine your voice, again and again…” _Sweetheart_ , she didn’t tell him. Didn’t admit the vulnerability that had had her falling for the nickname in the first place. “And I would smell your shirt I found, or the salve that smells like you, and I would touch myself - ” She sat back enough to palm her breasts, showing him. She smirked at the glazed look in his ravenous eyes as she slid one hand between her legs, rubbing hard and hissing at the still-swollen bud. “ - _Everywhere_.”

“Nesta - ” Cassian gasped, reaching for her. She sent her magic after him now, wending it to glowing silver ribbons and pinning his wrists back while her hands continued.

“You asked what I wanted,” Nesta crooned, massaging her breast in just the right way that it displayed itself perfectly to the enraptured lover trapped beneath her. “Aren’t you going to follow through with your _promise_?”

The word struck a nerve in Cassian, she knew. Struck a nerve in her, too, recalling all the promises they’d made to one another, most left unhonored in the end. But it got him to still, and she forced her mind onwards, draping her body across him and pressing every curve to his muscled form.

“I would say your name, just like you love it, to try and convince myself that the fantasy was real,” she went on. Moving the fabric of her dress out of the way, she replaced her hand with the head of his cock, rubbing her wet folds against him. “ _Ooh, yeah, oh_ \- Cassian,” she called out. She squeezed her eyes shut, concentrating on the sensations shooting through her as she moved against him. “ _Ah…_ ” She chanted his name like a prayer as she slid onto him, rolling her hips as he filled her, inch by inch. “ _Cassian_.”

He groaned, long and hard, as his aching length was enveloped by her velvet heat, and his arms strained against her magic. Still she kept him still, hands braced on his chest as she pushed all the way down, taking him all the way in. Fuck, so good, so fucking good - What did she say, how did she _speak_ \- 

“I,” she gasped. She breathed hard through her nose, trying to find not just breath but language. “I wanted you so badly - ” Her hands turned to fists against his shoulders. “I pleasured myself into oblivion, screaming your name until no other words existed - ”

_Don’t tell him too much,_ some lingering rationalization hissed into her mind. Because there were vulnerable sides to these stories, too. On the nights she had felt small and scared and alone in the universe, and had unwittingly thought of his arms banding around her in comfort - comfort she had led on to something more, needing the distraction as much as she had those nights in Velaris.

She’d told him she knew he’d be rough with her, that their first time wouldn’t be sweet. She’d thought it then, and she’d been right about it, too, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t ever imagined it otherwise. Hadn’t ever imagined him seeing her broken pieces and loving them anyways, in the same way broken artifacts were worth the world to the right people. She wanted to believe he was right, but with no courage to show him the jagged parts, there was no way for her to tell. With no way to tell him what she wanted from him, what she _really_ wanted deep in her soul, there was no way for him to give it to her.

So she took this from him, let him give her mindless pleasure that had, admittedly, led her somewhat out of the dark. Let him believe that this was her healed and at her happiest, that there was nothing else she desired from him and nothing else that kept her awake all through the night.

He groaned, sparking pleasure in her just at the sound, as she ground herself deeper into him, twisting her hips. She let out a breathy cry as he slid deep, and ran her hands up his stomach again. Feeling the muscles contract under her fingers - feeling the power in it.

She pulled herself up, letting him slide out, then pushed back hard. He groaned again, his guttural taunts gone, and bucked his hips up as best he could with his hands bound. They fell into a rhythm, his hips rising as hers fell, and soon the pressure building in her veins was reaching a fever pitch.

She wanted to tell him, then - wanted to tell him that it wasn’t just his body she’d dreamed of in those long nights. Wasn’t just his hands and his tongue and his cock, or his sinfully seductive voice. She wanted to tell him how much she wanted to read together by the fire every night, or how much she wanted to braid his hair into lots of tiny, silly plaits, or how much she wanted to wear his shirts with nothing underneath when they were alone in the house. She wanted to tell him that as much as the name _sweetheart_ could arouse her, it was also the only thing she could gasp to herself after a nightmare, when she couldn’t breathe and couldn’t think and needed to calm down before she screamed or blew the world to bits with her magic. She wanted to tell him what she wanted - what she _really_ wanted. But she couldn’t.

So she leaned into his ear, tracing her tongue around its shell, and said in her huskiest voice, “ _Come for me,_ sweetheart.”

Cassian’s groan shook the windows of the hut, just as she let her magic snap and his hands sprung free. He pulled her to him, still moving even as her lover’s body convulsed with spasms of pure pleasure. She was close - from the feel of it, even just from watching him come completely undone under her -

His hand snaked between them, finding her center again, and she barely had time to gasp the first syllable of his name before he was pressing hard enough to make her see stars, to make her mind fracture and fall like threads on a mobile all around her.

The world swam out of focus, her memories swimming before her. All of them of _him._ The urge to have him - to _tell_ him. But she pushed them away, pushed harder into his hand until she was screaming her voice hoarse, screaming for more and screaming for it to stop because it was _too good_ \- 

Finally her limbs gave out, and she collapsed like a ragdoll into his arms, sweat-damp hair against his chest, his heart raging beneath. There they lay, chasing breath and coherency in one another’s embrace. She wouldn’t tell him, but it was her favourite part.

Long minutes later, Cassian said roughly, “I was wondering where my salve had gone.” She saw his eyes sparkling with amusement, and forced herself to huff a laugh along with him. But even with things like this, with her body sated and him looking at her like she was the most precious thing in the world…

Even now, she wished her mate could love her like she did him.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm thinking about making this a series now actually


End file.
